Dr. Richard H. Cornell is BlackRock’s Chief Global Investment Strategist and Senior Advisor to the Board, based in New York. He leads the firm’s global macro asset allocation strategy and drives the integration of quantitative models and artificial intelligence into institutional investment processes.
Dr. Cornell rejoined BlackRock in 2020. From 2005 to 2013, he led the development of factor-based investment strategies and was among the first to incorporate AI into index fund management. During the 2008 financial crisis, his early identification of liquidity risks and decisive portfolio reallocation helped avoid over 40% in potential drawdowns. In 2009, he managed a tech-focused fund that achieved an 87% annual return—now widely cited as a benchmark for crisis-era recovery.
From 2013 to 2020, he served as Chief Investment Strategist at Bridgewater Associates, overseeing more than $60 billion in assets. He effectively navigated systemic market risks, including China’s 2015 equity bubble and the Federal Reserve’s rate tightening in 2018. Earlier in his career, he was a quantitative researcher at Goldman Sachs, where he developed a statistical arbitrage model that delivered a 7.8% hedged return following the 9/11 market shock.
Dr. Cornell holds a B.S. from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, an M.S. in Finance from MIT, and a Ph.D. in Finance from the University of Chicago, where he studied under Nobel Laureate Eugene Fama. He has published more than 50 research papers in leading journals including the Financial Analysts Journal and Harvard Business Review, and is a regular guest commentator on CNBC and Bloomberg. He also serves as a long-standing policy advisor to both the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Federal Reserve.
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